Tag: Ridley Scott

“Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it? That’s what it is to be a slave.”

Blade Runner, 1982 (Harrison Ford), The Ladd Company

I knew I had to end my Vintage Cable Box series with, what I regard to be, one of the greatest movies ever made. Nothing can prepare you for Blade Runner after a couple of years of the standard cable television fare. Occasionally, you had the big-budget spectacles, fine examples of genre film-making, Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick, but Blade Runner was unique. I only vaguely remembered trailers and teasers running on broadcast television. I never saw a preview at the movies, nor did I even see the movie in theaters. Ridley Scott had made a name for himself as a first-notch filmmaker with The Duellists and Alien after paying his dues in production design and advertising. The script and story treatments for Blade Runner floated around for a couple of years while Scott was preparing an adaptation of Dune. The Dune project fell through (and would eventually be helmed by David Lynch), and Scott was eager to start working on Blade Runner, based on Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

The year is 2019, and the place is Los Angeles. Our world in 2019 is a dystopian nightmare. Constant sheets of acid rain have destroyed the already-dilapidated metropolis and most humans have taken to life in “off-world colonies” (“The chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity,” the advertisements proclaim). Replicants, initially considered a form of android but then ret-conned in 2017’s Blade Runner 2049 as “manufactured humans” have become a dangerous liability when confronted with their slave status and the built-in obsolescence of a four year life span. In an effort to control these replicants, developer Eldon Tyrell (Joe Turkel) implants memories in them, but this backfires when they inevitably crave life more than the humans who built them. Errant replicant Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) leads a bunch of them to jump ship and return to Earth to meet their maker. Enter Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a replicant killer more commonly known as a “Blade Runner.”

Deckard is tasked with interviewing a beautiful woman, Tyrell’s assistant, named Rachael (Sean Young) who may or may not be a replicant. It seems Tyrell’s task is to either deceive authorities as to the identity of his replicants, or perhaps make his replicants believe they are human. It takes a while for Deckard to come to the conclusion that Rachael doesn’t know she’s a replicant. She saves his life when another replicant, the sub-intelligent Leon (Brion James) tries to kill him. He takes her back to his apartment and promises to keep her secret. Tyrell tells him she has no shut-off date; that she is, in effect, unique. Deckard retires the remaining replicants, but Batty proves to be a challenge. He taunts Deckard and leads him on a merry chase through the Bradbury Building. While Deckard is intent on finishing the job, Batty is fighting for his life, even as he knows his time is limited. Batty is incensed that Deckard has mercilessly killed his friends, and he tortures him for it. Ultimately, he spares Deckard’s life and perhaps Deckard has re-discovered his humanity.

Blade Runner was unfairly maligned by critics upon release in 1982, but over the years, the movie has attained an enormous cult following, culminating in the release of Blade Runner 2049 last year. In 1992, a “director’s cut” was released which removed the original film’s narration (considered by Scott to be tedious) and introduced a scene where Deckard dreams of a unicorn, making the reveal at the end of the movie (Deckard discovers a small origami unicorn in his hallway) ambiguous about Deckard’s humanity. Personally, I do not believe Deckard to be a replicant because, for me, it would make the ending of the movie and Batty’s sacrifice less meaningful. I would rather Deckard learn the lesson of his humanity, rather than believe him to be an amnesiac android. Blade Runner 2049 continues along this line of reasoning; perhaps what we value as humans is our capacity for understanding the gift of memory, and when our memories are manufactured, we will retain less of that value. Everything about this movie is perfect.

That about wraps it up for Vintage Cable Box. Again, I want to thank my readers. It’s been so much fun going back and revisiting and re-living these movies and that crazy time period, that time-line of what I saw and experienced and how it shaped me. Blade Runner just might be the most influential movie of the last 40 years, and it played constantly on cable television back in those days. Blade Runner 2049 manages to successfully evoke all of the best qualities about the original movie (and even improve upon certain aspects), which surprises me. Before I sign off, I have to thank a few people. Mark Jeacoma hosted these articles on his VHS Rewind! page. Andrew La Ganke suggested some great movies and found me a couple of hard-to-find titles. Geno Cuddy suggested Metropolis and provided a copy of the movie for me. Tony Verruso from the Vintage HBO Guides on Facebook was a staunch ally in dark times. Thanks for reading.

Our first cable box was a non-descript metal contraption with a rotary dial and unlimited potential (with no brand name – weird). We flipped it on, and the first thing we noticed was that the reception was crystal-clear; no ghosting, no snow, no fuzzy images. We had the premium package: HBO, Cinemax, The Movie Channel, MTV, Nickelodeon, CNN, The Disney Channel, and the local network affiliates. About $25-$30 a month. Each week (and sometimes twice a week!), “Vintage Cable Box” explores the wonderful world of premium Cable TV of the early eighties.

Bauhaus is considered “post-punk”, which is simple short-hand for the in-between years of the death of Disco, the birth of New Wave, the seminal jazz of New Romantic crossed with what would become Goth and Alternative. “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” opens The Hunger with Peter Murphy performing appropriately aloof. Can you imagine New York City in 1983? It was a city alive, steeped in bastard culture, the figurative melting pot; millions of people doing what they wanted, all the time stiffs in cheap suits acted as though they were in control. They weren’t.

I love this movie because it speaks to a city that no longer exists, but only in photographs; the difficult photographs you can’t upload. The photographs you have to dig up out of your photo albums and scan if you want anybody else to see them. It was an uncomfortable, even excruciating mix of the pop culture sensibilities of the time.

Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie are a crazy-sexy, chic couple of kooks, fabulous and beautiful, but they also happen to be vampires. They subsist on the blood of the unknowing, live in a fantastic brownstone (with an elevator!) – that’s what comes from immortality; at least you know where to keep your money, but nothing changes. People still want. People are still victims of their stupidity. Nothing changes for this pair. All they seek is food. Bowie begins to notice his aging. It’s not fair. He was promised immortality from Deneuve’s embrace, and now he’s pissed.

Enter Susan Sarandon’s character, Dr. Sarah Roberts, who seems to be pioneering work in advanced aging, which sparks Bowie’s interest. One of my favorite bits in the movie has to be Bowie waiting all day for Roberts to see him, meanwhile he has aged 50 years in the waiting room, while she ignores him. This is what it feels like in a doctor’s waiting room! Eventually, he is consigned to a coffin, and Deneuve gets friendly with Sarandon, and when I say “friendly”, I don’t mean pleasant, cordial smiles and flowers. Deneuve’s only (albeit predatory) interest in Sarandon is sustenance and companionship; the same, self-serving reasons she chose Bowie’s character 300 years before. In her highly-publicized (not to mention extremely erotic) love scene with Deneuve, Sarandon is deliberately made up and photographed to resemble Bowie.

The Hunger was unfairly maligned at the time of its release for being nothing more than a feature-length MTV music video. The first time I saw the movie on cable, I was instantly smitten with the visuals and the long dialogue-free passages telling a story in pictures, and the presence of the super-cool Deneuve and Bowie as sophisticated New York vampires who masquerade as music teachers during the day and blood-thirsty creatures by night. When laserdiscs became affordable, I actively sought out this title, so I could see the film unfettered and unmolested in letterbox format.

The bloody and (admittedly) ridiculous finale notwithstanding, The Hunger was an extremely influential film, not only to modern cinema but the mythology of vampire movies as they would evolve in the next thirty years. As depicted in Whitley Streiber’s source novel, they are not dreamy-eyed teenybopper bait yearning to be loved. They are wolves in sheep’s clothing searching for food, and when they find you, they will destroy you.

The Hunger was Tony Scott’s first feature-length film. He would go on to an illustrious career; the director of choice for action movies, Tom Cruise, and Denzel Washington. Scott directed Top Gun, Revenge, True Romance, Crimson Tide, Enemy of the State among many other movies. He died in 2012. Mr. Bowie passed away last week, so I rushed this one in tribute to the Thin White Duke.

Our first cable box was a non-descript metal contraption with a rotary dial and unlimited potential (with no brand name – weird). We flipped it on, and the first thing we noticed was that the reception was crystal-clear; no ghosting, no snow, no fuzzy images. We had the premium package: HBO, Cinemax, The Movie Channel, MTV, Nickelodeon, CNN, The Disney Channel, and the local network affiliates. About $25-$30 a month. Each week (and sometimes twice a week!), “Vintage Cable Box” explores the wonderful world of premium Cable TV of the early eighties.